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Key Vote NO on Backdoor Internet Sales Tax Vote

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to vote NO on any amendment to the Senate budget that attempts to create a deficit-neutral reserve fund dealing with the collection of state sales and use taxes. The aim of such an amendment is to serve as a proxy vote for an internet sales tax scheme such as the Marketplace Fairness Act.

The aforementioned Marketplace Fairness Act is a bill to allow states to collect sales taxes on internet purchases, based on the location of the purchaser of the product. While supporters claim this law would make business fairer for small brick-and-mortar businesses, in reality it would place an impossible burden upon internet sellers (most of which are themselves small businesses), by requiring them to track and enforce the thousands of sales tax laws that exist in the many states. In addition, the Marketplace Fairness Act violates the long-held taxpayer protection that states may only tax individuals who are physically present in that state. If, in fact, states were to collect an internet sales tax at all, it should certainly be based upon the location on the businesses and not the consumer.

But more important than the larger issue of how the proposed internet sales tax works is the fact that such a radical change in accepted practices of taxation needs to be debated openly and at length in committee. Instead, the point of an amendment creating a reserve fund that deals with state sales taxes is that the generic, innocuous language of said amendment is likely to escape the notice of many Senators. But once passed, the amendment would be used to demonstrate that other bills that dramatically expand state tax authority have enough support to be fast-tracked to the floor.

Thus, I urge you to call your U.S. Senators and ask them to vote NO on any amendment allowing a “deficit-neutral reserve fund” dealing with state sales and use taxes. We may count any such vote as a KEY VOTE when calculating the 2013 FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard, which is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

Today marks the biggest online shopping day of the year! Dubbed Cyber Monday, millions of people are expected to take advantage of huge sales and mostly sales tax-free online shopping. Unfortunately, though, this could be our last tax-free Christmas shopping season if some politicians get their way.

The National Bureau of Economic Research recently published the shocking finding that raising taxes on a service causes people to use less of that service. Despite this having been common knowledge to economists and non-economists alike for literally hundreds of years, much is being made of the study, which focuses on how the internet sales tax affects consumers’ use of Amazon.com.

Old stereotypes die hard, regardless of their increasing inability to reflect reality. Consider the caricature of the corporate fat cat, clad cartoonishly in top hat and spats, building monopolies, crushing competition, exploiting workers and all the while lining his pockets with wads and wads of filthy lucre. Now quick, how do you think our straw industrialist will vote? If you said Republican, you’re not alone.

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your Members of Congress and urge them to vote NO on the omnibus appropriations bill. The omnibus is being offered as a substitute amendment to H.R. 3547.

The Senate is expected to spend the bulk of the upcoming week on their edition of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the bill that outlines what Congress is allowed to spend on most aspects of defense for Fiscal Year 2014. This includes the DoD, some of the Dept. of Energy, Veterans' Affairs, and "Overseas Contingency Operations" (OCO) spending, which is funding for the drawdown in Afghanistan.